


Who Will be King Hereafter

by Amazing_E_ko



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Horror, Pre-Canon, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 17:32:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9000163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amazing_E_ko/pseuds/Amazing_E_ko
Summary: Statement of Johnathan Sims, Artifact Cataloguer of the Magnus Institute. Statement given May 7th, 2010.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kay_obsessive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_obsessive/gifts).



_ Statement of Johnathan Sims, Artifact Cataloguer of the Magnus Institute. Statement given May 7th, 2010. _

I’ve been told that it’s traditional for all new employees of the Magnus Institute to record a statement about the reasons behind their desire to work for the organisation. Though I’ve also been told that no human eye is ever likely to read what I write. Nevertheless, I believe order and structure to be the foundation of any well-maintained archive or catalogue, and so I have decided to record what little I have to say on the matter.

It should be noted straight away that I am by no means convinced that I have ever had a supernatural experience. What I have, I think of more as a niggle. Like having a wobbly tooth as a child, I have an experience which I have not yet been able to put to rest. I push and pull at it, but it refuses to pop out, refuses to leave me alone.

I should start, as it were, from the beginning.

 

About two years ago, when I had finished my degree, I moved to Bristol to work in a small public library there. It was my first time in the city, and I’ve never been quick to make friends, so at first I was quite isolated. However, there was a group of poets and writers who often came to the library to give readings, and more by association than inclination, I ended up becoming friends with them. I don’t know that they were the friends I would have chosen of my own volition, but that is irrelevant to this particular story.

One of the group was a man named David. He was by far the most erratic member of that little circle - he didn’t always show up to readings, and he rarely had his phone turned on, so he was hard to contact. If you actually wanted to talk to him, your best bet was usually to go to his apartment and see if he was there, though I can’t say that I ever found it necessary to try. When he did show up, he would sit quietly, rarely talking to anyone, read his stories, and then leave. His work was strange: dark and often unsettling, but with a certain compelling turn of phrase that made it memorable. I often wondered why the group as a whole put up with him, but it was only after the events I’m about to relate that I found out he was an excellent proofreader.

I had rarely spoken to him myself, since we were both rather reserved, and I think drawn to more gregarious types, but one morning, when I was doing the tedious job of working the library front desk, I saw him walking up the path towards me in a most determined manner. He came in through the door in a rush, looking around to see who was in the library. When he saw it was just me he relaxed slightly, and I noticed that one arm was tucked into his jacket, concealing something beneath it.

"Look mate," he said to me, "you know about old books and stuff, right?"

"I do have a degree in Archival Studies," I said, perhaps somewhat acerbically. He didn't seem to notice.

"Have you ever heard of Jurgen Leitner?" he said.

If only I had known then what I know now, this story might have a very different ending.

"No," I said.

He looked around again, checking that we were truly alone, and then removed his arm from his coat, taking out a book. It was one of those cheap Penguin paperbacks with the orange and white logos that have become so ubiquitous on tat like cups and book bags. Strangely though, there was no author listed on the front cover, only a title:  _ What is to Come _ . Carefully, David opened the cover to show me the frontspiece, which was decorated with a now familiar stamp and the name Jurgen Leitner.

"What do you think?"

"I think it's a paperback," I said. "Are you feeling all right?"

He twitched, and leaned closer.

"What if I told you," he said, "that this book predicts the future?"

I raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'd tell you it was a hoax," I said. Still, I made to turn another page, get a look at the contents of the book. David reached out and gripped my wrist tightly, stopping me.

"Sorry, Johnny," he said. "I can't take the risk."

I have always hated being called Johnny.

"Well," I snapped, "I have never heard of this man or his library, so if that's all you have to say-"

He smiled a little wanly at me.

"Don't be jealous, Johnny," he said. "If it works, I'll pass it on to you when I've got what I need."

He left me, and in as much as I thought anything of the encounter, it was a vague sense of smugness at not having been taken in by his hoax.

 

The next day was a free day for me, and I was at home catching up on some reading when Jenine stopped by.

"Come on," she said, "we're going out."

Jenine was one of the most talented members of that circle, and though she was not pretty by any conventional standard, she had a most beautiful voice, and in my loneliness I had half-decided I was in love with her. It most definitely didn't work out, but that is not a matter that concerns this story.

"Where are we going?" I said.

"To the pub, of course! Didn't you hear? David won the lotto, and he's got an open tab running for us all night."

I felt ice slide down my spine.

"He won the lottery?"

"Yeah. It wasn't an especially big one, only just over a million, I think, but all the same!" Her voice thrilled at the thought of such riches.

We went down to The Old Hand, our usual haunt, and had a merry enough night. Everyone was pretty deep in their cups by the time I got there, and it only became messier as the evening wore on. David was in the best form I ever saw him, cheerful and laughing and friendly. I tried once or twice to catch his eye, but he always avoided me.

Did I believe, then that he had used the book to get the lottery numbers? I don't know. I was suspicious and doubtful and troubled, feelings that only increased over time.

 

David's good fortune continued. He seemed always to be in the right place at the right time. He had several stories accepted to prestigious magazines, sending off the right submission to the right editor at the right moment. And he shared his good fortune, to a certain degree. I remember one evening he told Alice not to get the bus to work the next morning, because he'd heard the roads were going to be icy. She took his advice, and heard later that day that her usual bus had skidded on the ice and crashed, killing twelve of the passengers.

"What a lucky thing it was David mentioned the ice," she said with a shudder, but if she thought more of it than that, she never told me.

I did notice, however, that although David's fortunes continued to climb, he himself did not seem so cheerful. He was jumpy, and nervous, spooked by shadows. He became obsessed with things being in the correct place, and he was constantly fidgeting with small objects around him, repeatedly moving them, so that they aligned perfectly with each other.

 

The last time I saw David was late in the evening, as the library was about to close. I was in the stacks, putting away books that our patrons had left out on the tables, when he came up to me. He looked anxious, but to my surprise he said nothing, just stood there, staring at me with an expression both sad and hungry.

"David?" I said. "Can I help you?"

"What would you have done," he said, "if you'd found the book, and not me?"

"I would have thought it was a hoax," I said, "which is presumably why you are now rich and I am not."

Even as I said it, I knew I still believed that really, this was all some big trick, though it was becoming harder to discount the evidence in favour of David's honesty.

"You would have been wiser than me, so," he said miserably. "It wouldn't have caught you."

I stammered something about not understanding, and looked more miserable than ever.

"It knows, you know," he said heavily. "It knows I'm coming to talk to you, but it also knows it won't do any good. I can't get out." His eyes widened, and he said it again, choking it out against a sob. "I can't get out."

I tried to quiet him, both uncomfortable with an emotion I did not understand, and aware that he was drawing attention to us by making so much noise in the library. It didn't do much good.

"I thought," he said, "that I could do it right. Get what I wanted and avoid the bad things coming for me. But I was wrong. Everything I do is as it says. It's like Oedipus. Or Macbeth." He sniffled and wiped his sleeve. "Did you study those in school?"

"No, but I know the stories."

"You don't know them," he said sadly. "You don't know them until you've lived them inside out."

"Perhaps," I said tentatively, "you should see someone about this?"

"Oh Johnny," he said, "you're a good friend. But it wouldn't help. It told me the hour of my death, and every step I take is down the path to that cold water."

I tried to reason with him, but he shrugged me off again and left. I watched him go, worried, but thinking there was nothing I could do. I thought that it would be all right. That was my mistake.

 

They found his body five days later, washed up on a beach. The inquest found that he had been seen walking out onto the pier late that night, and though no one had actually seen him jump, the conclusion was inescapable. He had loaded his pockets with stones. They also found traces of LSD in his system, and although that drug's links to suicide have been soundly disproven, it was enough for the police. No book entitled  _ What is to Come _ was ever found among his possessions. The optimist in me hopes that he took it with him, and made sure it would never hurt another person. The realist suspects that, having done its work, the book found a way to move on.

And that is the whole of my story. An acquaintance of mine won the lottery, and a few weeks later, killed himself. Did he do it because a book from the library of Jurgen Leitner told him to? Or, more chillingly, did the book merely spell out the future he had already chosen for himself? Was it manipulation or fate? I have no good answers, only these questions, which niggle like a loose tooth. I will find the answers though. That, after all, was why I decided to come and work here.

 


End file.
